Not to piss off my friends exhibiting and those who work hard to make Art Basel | Basel what it is, but this year’s edition of the fair was rather subdued. Not much stood out in the general musk of Messeplatz number 10 (– there was a distinct scent in the air during the VIP day.)
Reflecting on what I saw in the fair, there was only one work of art which made me want to return to it and return to it I did: Fiona Connor’s Closed Down Clubs, Chango Coffee, 2022. Presented by Maureen Paley, the work exists as a facsimile of an old door, lock, hinge, fire-door safety sticker and more, all meticulously reproduced. Freestanding in the booth, …Chango Coffee has a particular sculptural energy; a presence which asserts the artwork’s being before me and the layers of material that constitute its form. This layering seems allusive. To break the work down compositionally: the blackened wood door and its central window pane are fronted by a decorative security shutter, sellotaped to this pane’s verso, two screenprined notices appear, one taking the form of a handwritten note on brown paper the other typed on bone white, backing these, further sheets of disposable packing paper operate doubbley, rendering the window purposeless while giving the sculpture a visual weight, much like a bronzed memorial. Thinking abstractly, with these formal characteristics in mind, I want to suggest that Connor’s door manifests as an opening foreclosed. And yet, I feel the work is reaching out to me, inviting me to look beyond its hard shell and to read something more fragile, personal in its crafting.
…Chango Coffee is one sculpture in an ongoing series of such one-to-one door reproductions. Made during obsessive periods of research and observation, where Connor delves into various archives, formal and quotidian, each of her replicas directly relates to a real door which once fronted a nightclub or community space; specifically, a venue of sociality and expression which has been forced to close down due to socio-cultural, economic or political factors – the realities of contemporary urban life. With their trompe-l’œil quality, these arts make the histories of these lost sites tangible. …Chango Coffee is a particularly intimate example of such a materialisation. The two notices affixed to the glass pane attest to this. Here, Conner has reproduced, word-for-word, the signs which the owners of Chango Coffee taped to the shop’s front door in May 2018 to inform their “Loyal Patrons” and “Customers” that the shop has been “CLOSED” due to increases in operating costs (quotes from the artwork). Attending to how the same message was conveyed in different terms – semantically via sociable and formal forms of language and aesthetically writ in both marker pen and typed in a serif font face, as well as how these notices were arranged one above the other – …Chango Coffee demonstrates how, in our contemporary urban present, gestures of human empathy are positioned below the broken face of the clerical third person.
Accounting for the effect of the work’s wider formalities – how the packing paper stuck on the door’s reverse blocks our abilities to see through its window pane, allusively situating us in the here and now of the encounter, as well as operating visually to give the structure a physical flatness – …Chango Coffee exists as a reified ghost. That is, in producing her facsimile from various social sources, records sanctified and not, Connor creates a memorial-like form. This form is reflective but, more so, it prompts reflection; in…Chango Coffee, we not only witness the trace of social death on a one-to-one scale but are reminded that the cause of this can be reproduced to shutter the thresholds of the social spaces we venture through closer to home.
Art Basel | Basel, June 18th-21st, 2026 @artbasel
Categories Tags Author 
Toby Üpson is an art writer currently based in Glasgow.